Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has engaged in periodic quarrels with Spain, but relations reached a new low on Wednesday when he said that the two countries’ relations should be put on “pause.”
Lopez Obrador made it sound like a time-out for Spain, a country he has asked to apologize for the 1521 Conquest of Mexico and centuries of colonial rule.
Spain never did and some have accused Lopez Obrador of using the five-century-old issue to distract attention.
Photo: AFP
Lopez Obrador did not explain exactly what a “pause” would mean, but the proposal came at the end of a diatribe against Spanish energy companies that he said had taken unfair advantage of private-sector openings in Mexico.
The president said the firms had engaged in “robbery” and treated Mexico like “a conquered land.”
“Right now the relationship is not good,” Lopez Obrador told his daily news briefing.
“I would like to put it on pause, until we can normalize it, that I think would be in the best interest of Mexicans and Spaniards,” the president added.
“Let’s give ourselves a little time, a pause,” he said.
“Maybe relations will be re-established when the administration changes,” he added.
Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Jose Manuel Albares downplayed the Mexican president’s remarks, saying that they were made “in an informal context, in answer to a journalist’s question, and so do not constitute an official position or statement.”
“You would have to ask President Lopez Obrador what he meant by this,” Albares said.
Spanish energy companies such as Repsol and Iberdrola took advantage of openings in the past decade that allowed private and foreign companies to build electrical power plants in Mexico, a sector once dominated by Mexico’s state-owned utility.
Lopez Obrador is seeking to reverse those openings, because he said the state-owned company was put at a disadvantage with private firms.
That proposed change has drawn concern about protecting the investments of the Spanish companies.
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